


"You did this?"

by AuthorinExile



Series: Fictober 2020 [3]
Category: Faerie Folklore, Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Academia, Adult Sarah Williams (Labyrinth), Altars, Childhood Trauma, David Bowie was a halfling there I said it, Enemies to Friends, Faerie Folklore - Freeform, Feeling Pity for the People Who Traumatized You, Gen, Goblin (Labyrinth) Hijinks & Shenanigans, How could you meet the Goblin King and NOT dedicate your life to the study of mythology?, Isolation, Magic, Mythology References, Neurodivergent Sarah, Paganism, Post-Canon, References to David Bowie, Sarah Becomes an Academic, Sarah's Dreams, Superstition, The Goblin King is a Diva, Trauma Recovery, folk magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29253099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuthorinExile/pseuds/AuthorinExile
Summary: Sarah tries to move on with her life. Jareth does not.
Relationships: Jareth & Sarah Williams
Series: Fictober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2147928
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	"You did this?"

Sarah becomes, as one might expect, superstitious.

She also becomes even more well-read than she was before what she calls The Babysitting Incident, so no one pays too much attention or even cares, really. Sarah’s a unique girl, and she often used to adopt the mannerisms and styles she read about, so this is just seen as another feature of her personality. So what if her new obsession is old faerie mythology? So what if she buys a pair of antique iron scissors and carries them everywhere? So what if she takes up baking for the sole purpose of leaving fresh cakes and cream on her windowsill most nights?

That’s just _Sarah_. You get used to it. Besides, the treats she leaves out always disappear by morning, so she’s obviously cleaning up after herself, and as long as she does that, it’s fine.

Sarah becomes more aware of the _strangeness_ around her, too. Suddenly, she notices every time a shadow moves on its own or an item ends up somewhere she never put it or a whole tray of fresh treats goes missing. She’s been made aware. At least, that’s what she tells herself. These things, these creatures and occurrences, have always been there. It’s just that, before the Goblin King, she didn’t know what to look for, so she never found anything.

That’s what she has to tell herself. The alternative--the idea that these things _weren’t_ always there but were, in fact, sent by the Goblin King to keep tabs on her--is too frightening and confusing and infuriating to bear. So she doesn’t. 

It’s not new. It’s just more obvious.

Sarah keeps her eyes open and she keeps her superstitions held tight to her chest and, most importantly of all, she tells Toby every Faerie story she can find or remember or make up to warn him of the dangers she’s already saved him from once. She doesn’t tell him the truth for fear of scaring him, but she promises both of them that she’ll tell him when he’s older. When he can handle it.

She goes away to college and makes it a full year in before realizing that acting just...doesn’t do it for her anymore.

Sarah spends some time thinking about it, wondering when that happened, and it takes a full week for her to remember the Goblin King’s promise to give her all of her dreams in return for Toby. She remembers the glass bubble he had produced at nearly every encounter, remembers the images she had always seen dancing within it.

She remembers seeing that bubble pop as she turned him down that final time, and she laughs until she cries. Then she cries until her parents call and she has her regular chat with Toby. 

As she tells him his favorite myth for the umpteenth time, she thinks, _Worth it._

Sarah goes back to college. She studies history and mythology and writes several papers on the evolution of the myths of old into the fairy tales of today and makes quite a name for herself in the world of academia.

It isn’t what she dreamed, but she’s good at it, and it’s enjoyable.

Time passes.

Sarah graduates and finds a career working with old texts and consulting researchers on the religious or cultural significance of their finds. She leaves out cake and bread and cream and wine every night. She buys a house and nails an iron horseshoe over the doorway. She lives away from civilization, for the most part, brutally aware of how poorly she fits in with other people these days. How badly she’s always fit in with other people.

Sarah settles into her new, grown-up, post-goblins life with no small amount of effort and no great amount of ease.

It takes a very long time for her to stop jumping at shadows. It takes longer for her to pretend the rustle of wind through leaves doesn’t sound like squeaking laughter. She never quite manages to sleep in total darkness and silence again, now needing constant white noise and dim light to even nap comfortably.

She never stops wondering if the Goblin King had looked like David Bowie or David Bowie had looked like the Goblin King or how much of it was a glamour at all. A lot of it, she suspects. Most of it, she thinks when she throws away her statue and her maze games and all the other things she had seen reflected in his realm.

The Goblin King, she realizes, is not unlike an angler fish. He builds something to lure you in, like a book filled with your favorite things. He creates a world you know well, like a labyrinth, but he changes it just a bit so you don’t know it _that_ well, like a labyrinth that moves and shifts around you. He plays a game with you, but he changes all the rules whenever he decides, and he rigs it so you lose. 

She had been right all those years ago, despite his mocking. It _isn’t_ fair, but that’s the point. He never intended to be fair at all.

For the most part, Sarah tries not to think about the Goblin King or his realm. She usually fails, but it’s the effort that counts. Occasionally, she thinks of her friends. She wonders if they think of her.

She could probably call them, if she tried. She has their names, after all, and it had worked every time before.

She doesn’t call for them. 

She hopes, as much as she hates it, that they’ve forgotten all about her and never think of her at all. She hopes they’ve forgotten her name and hates that she’d been too naive to know not to give it. She hopes her lipstick has faded from those flagstones. She hopes every hair she shed there has rotted away into dust. She hopes every fingerprint is smudged and every footprint filled in. She hopes desperately that every trace of her left in that place disappears, has already disappeared, so she can be free.

She hopes, but she knows that the Goblin King’s domain bends only to his will, and he will never forget her, the girl who beat him at his own game.

In any other context, she would consider such thoughts hubris.

Here and now, it is only reality.

Sarah’s reality is shifted slightly from that of her family and friends and neighbors. She sees the same world that they do, but she also sees slightly to the left of it and slightly behind it.

And it’s...fine. She makes do. She copes just as well as she can, even if she is a hermit and a loner and so secluded she quietly wishes for company, any company, so long as it behaves itself better than the goblins had.

There are two full moons one October. The second, the infamous “blue moon,” falls on Halloween.

Because of course it does.

Sarah decides against going out that night. She’d been invited out by her few friends and asked out by one particularly annoying coworker, but she had decided that this was a Samhain best spent locked safely in her home.

She regrets that decision when the lights abruptly go out and the laughter starts.

She doesn’t say anything--not a gasp, not a word, and certainly not a name--as she reaches into her bag and retrieves her scissors.

The laughter, she notes, dies down slightly when the shadows creating them realize they cannot get inside her home. It silences completely when the much larger cloaked shadow on her porch reaches its-- _his_ \--hand out and jolts with a muffled swear as soon as it touches her door.

Sarah is not a particularly vindictive woman by nature, but she does not fight the slow smile that stretches over her face at the sound.

In all honesty, she had been concerned it wouldn’t work, but apparently, there really is no substitute for good old-fashioned iron and a solid threshold. 

Moving silently on her sock-covered feet, Sarah creeps up beside the door, watching his shadow move beyond her curtains.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” she mocks, taking silent delight in the way he stills.

“Sarah,” he says.

She feels the magic in his voice flow around her home, but it can take no hold on her with the iron and the threshold between them. If she didn’t know any better, though, she might say the Goblin King sounds virtually _warm_.

It’s a good thing she knows better.

“Yes,” she affirms, knowing there’s no point in denying it. He knows. He has her name.

“It’s terribly rude to leave a guest standing out in the cold, you know.”

“It’s rude to show up uninvited, too.”

That gives him pause. It’s probably not smart to deal in politeness and hospitality with one of the Fair Folk, but Sarah is enjoying throwing him off too much to really care.

_Serves him right,_ she thinks. _Let’s see how he likes being on this side of it._

“Well,” he speaks, and Sarah strains to hear how he weasels his way out of this one, “I apologize for the intrusion, but I merely meant to check up on you. After all, you never write.”

The last line is delivered as sarcastically as possible, but she can only tell because of her previous experience with his tones of voice. It could reasonably pass as sincere, which means it falls on her to make the next move.

Ah, but this time he is her guest instead of the other way around.

“Unfortunately,” she says though it’s anything but, “I’m just not prepared to receive. You understand, I’m sure. It’s a real shame.”

There’s a long pause before Sarah hears the rustle of fabric and a heavy sigh and a soft thump and--

And the Goblin King has turned around like a huge toddler to sit and brood on her front steps.

Sarah doesn’t open the door. She isn’t an idiot.

She does, however, pull back the curtain over the door’s glass window to get a clearer look at him.

She… doesn’t know what she was expecting, really. Some part of her thought he’d be wearing David Bowie’s face, still. Another part thought maybe she’d see whatever true--or, at least, tru _er_ \--form he takes when not playing on the hormone-driven weaknesses of teenage girls.

But he’s just… He’s just a man.

Well, almost. 

He still resembles David Bowie in some ways. The eyes are shaped the same but are a brighter, almost electric blue. He’s taller, much taller, than he had been before, but still lean. His hair is longer and lighter in color--although Sarah notes with some amusement that it still appears to be dyed in pastel rainbow streaks at the ends. His face is more angular and, somehow, more androgynous. The most striking difference, however, is his skin, which is paler and brighter. So much so, in fact, that Sarah at first thinks it is a trick of the moonlight. But no, his skin is really that pale. Almost silver.

He looks, Sarah abruptly realizes, not like a copy of David Bowie. He looks like a _relative_ of David Bowie, which… Well, it could easily be a glamour, of course, but…

Sarah remembers hearing the Goblin King sing. She knows David Bowie’s voice. She knows how charming Bowie can be and how everyone in the world seems drawn in by his voice and his looks and his mannerisms. She knows the stories about the occasional trips the fae take out to the world, knows the stories about the lovers they occasionally take, and she wonders…

“It’s rude to stare,” the Goblin King says, turning to face her.

Sarah allows her frown to twist her face.

“Why are you here?”

“I can’t visit an old friend?”

“Oh, certainly you can. Better get a move on. They’re probably expecting you.”

Sarah has read a million stories that describe the laugh of the Fair Folk as silver bells. The laugh the being on her steps lets out is more reminiscent of trees creaking in a strong wind.

“You’ve gotten wittier. That’s a relief. I was worried you were stunted in some way.”

Sarah sighs.

“This has been lovely. Are we done exchanging barbs? I have a book I need to finish.”

“You know,” the goblin says, twisting to face her and pulling one knee up to wrap his arms around it as he stretches the other out in front of him, “I expected you to be different after all this time. But you’ve surprised even me. Really, Sarah. Really? You did...this?”

He gestures to the entirety of her home with the same facial expression and flippant wave one might use when gesturing to a pile of old vomit.

“Had to make my point somehow,” she says quietly.

The Goblin King, the ancient and powerful ruler of an entire realm of Faerie, snorts and rolls his eyes.

“You’re ever so dramatic, Sarah.”

“You’re wearing a cape that looks like the aurora borealis, complete with light and movement.”

His face lights up, and he stretches one side of said cape out.

“Isn’t it lovely?”

And that’s it.

Sarah snorts, clapping a hand to her mouth in horror before realizing that it’s too late. The damage is done. Her unwanted guest has twisted to look at her, utterly shocked, and Sarah just can’t take it. She bursts into loud, lengthy laughter at the sight, at the situation, at herself for being amused by it all. 

“I can’t fucking _believe_ ,” she wheezes, “that I’m having a conversation with the goddamn Goblin King on Halloween. How the _hell_ has my life become this?”

Said Goblin King doesn’t answer. He just watches and waits for her to calm herself down, apparently coming to a realization as he waits.

“You really don’t want me here,” he says with a furrowed brow and utterly perplexed tone.

“No. I really don’t.”

“But then,” he’s scrambling now, eyes darting around as though seeing her home and all its safeguards for the first time. “But then, if you don’t want me here, why did you keep leaving offerings?”

Sarah pauses and stares at him.

“Those weren’t for you.”

“No? But then why--”

“Jareth,” she says, and his head snaps up. Struggling to keep the pity from her voice, Sarah says, “Nobody leaves offerings like that out for goblins.”

And it’s true. Goblins aren’t what people try to attract. There’s just, usually, no point in trying to get on the good side of goblins. The best you can do is get on the good side of the comparatively nicer creatures and protect yourself from goblins and hope it all balances out.

Sarah wasn’t leaving offerings for the goblins all these years. She was leaving offerings in the hope that something else would protect her from the goblins.

Now, she gets the singular experience of watching that realization bloom across the face of the Goblin King, the face of Jareth, himself.

“Oh,” he whispers. Then, more strongly, “Oh. Well. I’ll just… You have my apologies. I’ll trouble you no further.”

He stands, turns his back, and steps down off of her porch, and in a fit of madness, Sarah says, “Wait.”

He does, turning almost sheepishly to meet her gaze.

“You came all this way because you thought I was leaving you offerings. Why?”

He pauses, presumably to figure out how truthful to be, before smiling so slightly it might be a shadow.

“Nobody leaves offerings like that out for goblins.”

Sarah fights against it, but her heart drops.

“You’re lonely.”

It’s not a question, and Jareth doesn’t respond, but the way he turns his gaze away from her and back up to the stars is answer enough, really.

There’s some anger left in Sarah after all, apparently, because she snarks, “I guess it would be hard to make friends when you kidnap babies, huh?”

“I don’t _kidnap_ ,” he snaps--for a moment literally as his teeth seem a little too sharp, his jaw a little too long. “I don’t _kidnap_ or _steal_. I take only what is freely given.”

Sarah opens her mouth to retort and is interrupted.

“‘I wish the goblins would come and take you away. Right now,’” her voice says from his lips. Then, in his own voice, “Remember that? Remember how much you meant it? It was an honest wish, Sarah. I only ever did what you asked of me.”

She can’t respond. There’s nothing to say, nothing she could say, no denial she could give that would make his words any less true.

“You’re right,” she says instead. “You’re right, and I… I apologize. That was harsh of me.”

Jareth pulls back and stares at her, mystified and obviously waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It doesn’t. Sarah is sincere, and she can tell as soon as Jareth figures that out because he turns away from her again.

Sarah makes a decision and slides open the little window beside her door just a crack, just enough to sit in the chair beside it and talk through the slit without sacrificing any of her threshold or dislodging any of her iron nails.

“I’m tired of talking through the glass,” she says when Jareth’s eyes find hers.

His gaze softens, but he doesn’t say anything. He just takes his seat again on the edge of the stairs, though now he looks ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.

And Sarah… Sarah is lost. She doesn’t know where to take the conversation from here. She doesn’t know how to continue. She doesn’t know if she should.

“Your friends,” the goblin says, oh-so-carefully, as if treading on paper-thin ice. “Your friends miss you a great deal.”

Sarah stares, wondering if he’d read her thoughts, wondering if this was a mistake, if she should chase him off.

Jareth shrugs, looking very nearly embarrassed.

“They… They asked me to relay that message. To you. They wanted you to know that they’re still willing to visit, if you want.”

Sarah feels her heart sink. She suddenly feels terrible.

All this time trying to protect herself. All this time hoping to lose the Goblin King himself by losing her friends and her connections and even her ties to the human world.

And all she did was make her friends think she didn’t care and make the one being she was so scared of think she did.

_What a waste_ , she thinks.

“I’d like that,” she says finally.

Jareth smiles in return, but it’s muted now.

“I… Jareth, I just--”

“Well,” he interrupts as he stands to his full height once again, “I must be off.”

Before she can interject, he points to the sky. Sarah turns in that direction and sees the moon sinking toward the horizon.

“So soon?” She asks, though whether it’s an instinctual formality or an actual question, she isn’t sure.

“Yes. Gateways only stay open for so long, you know.”

Sarah turns and catches his eye.

“I’m,” she reaches for a word and finds, “glad… I’m glad you decided to drop by. Just… A little warning next time, maybe?”

Jareth laughs again and it sounds like the rot of fallen leaves on the forest floor.

“Naturally,” he replies, sweeping down in a formal bow and backing off of her steps and into the darkness of the trees around her home. His form disappears entirely, but the gleam of his eyes lingers for several long moments, keeping contact with hers, before they too blink out of existence.

A few days later, Sarah kneels before her outdoor altar with a tray in her hands. On it, she carries a cup of wine and a plate of small cakes. These she moves to the altar as she says, just loudly enough to be heard by the things that need to hear, “These are for the Goblin King.”

Then, in case of confusion, she adds, “For Jareth.”

She waits for a moment, curious, but he does not appear. She didn’t really expect him to, of course. He wouldn’t give her his true name for anything, she suspects.

The next day, not a crumb of cake nor a drop of wine is left on the altar.

Sarah wonders if, between implying there would be a next visit and leaving offerings on purpose now, it counts as an invitation. If not, she can always send word back with her friends when they visit next.

After all, she _did_ wish for company. At least he was better behaved this time than the first. 


End file.
